Tsvangirai 'begged' Mugabe for VP's post

Tsvangirai 'begged' Mugabe for VP's post

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By Lebo Nkatazo

ZIMBABWE’S main opposition leader on Sunday faced damaging allegations that he misled the public over his views on a government of national unity, as it emerged that he had unsuccessfully tried to convince President Robert Mugabe to make him his deputy.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has split into two factions, one led by party leader Morgan Tsvangirai and another led by Professor Welshman Ncube, the party’s secretary general.

Tsvangirai clashed with his senior colleagues in October after rejecting a vote of the party’s national council supporting participation in senate elections next weekend.

Tsvangirai stance, while popular on the ground, has created a constitutional crisis for the MDC. His colleagues now openly accuse him of being a “dictator in the making”, and have vowed to haul him before the party’s disciplinary committee after the senate elections.

Addressing his supporters earlier this month, Tsvangirai claimed that Ncube’s camp in fact wanted a unity government with Mugabe’s Zanu PF.

“The MDC,” Tsvangirai said, “has never sought to partner Zanu PF in government. We seek no such partnership.”

The Ncube camp made a forceful rebuttal of Tsvangirai’s claims at a weekend rally in the MDC stronghold of Bulawayo. St Mary’s MP, Job Sikhala, revealed that Tsvangirai had begged regional leaders and top army generals to convince Mugabe to take him as his deputy.

Sikhala said Tsvangirai had deployed him, then Zengeza MP Tafadzwa Musekiwa and the deputy secretary general Gift Chimanikire to meet the Commander of the Air Force of Zimbabwe, Air Marshal Perence Shiri in 2001, just months before the 2002 Presidential elections.

“I went there at the behest of my president and Shiri prepared us a very big fish,” Sikhala told thousands of supporters. “Shiri said Vice Presidents (Simon) Muzenda and (Joseph) Msika were still alive and there was therefore no way that Tsvangirai could be accommodated.

“When we told him (Tsvangirai) this, he told us to go back to Shiri and tell him that he would talk to his MPs so that constitutional changes could be made so that the country could have three Vice Presidents.”

Sikhala, a maverick former university student activist, also revealed that Tsvangirai held meetings with President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo “begging” them to “pressure” Mugabe into making him Vice President.

“We must be careful with this man, if we are stupid he will auction us like second hand clothing, for his benefit,” Sikhala said to rapturous laughter.

Musekiwa, once Zimbabwe’s youngest MP, confirmed to New Zimbabwe.com on Monday that he indeed met Air Marshal Shiri with Sikhala, but declined to give details.

“I did many things in an unofficial capacity, some for the party and others for the president of the MDC and I believe it is not wise to discuss those issues now,” said Musekiwa from his new base in the United Kingdom where he is studying.

In further evidence of the deep divisions, Sikhala compared Tsvangirai to Idi Amin, the notorious former Ugandan dictator.

Sikhala said: “The national council met at Harvest House, on the sixth floor, from 8am to 4:30pm to discuss this issue of the Senate elections. There was a deadlock and in the end we went for a vote. The majority voted in favour of taking part in the elections but after that your leader said he did not recognise the vote and declared that if the MDC is to split, let it split. He then took his jacket and walked away.

“…If you are a democratic leader, can you tell people that if you lock the door, no one enters? The only other person I know to have said that is Idi Amin who said, in 1976; ‘I am Uganda, without me there is no Uganda.’ If a person shows qualities of an international dictator how can we win the war against Zanu PF with him as our leader?”

Paul Themba Nyathi, an independence war veteran and the MDC’s national spokesman took a similar line, hammering at Tsvangirai’s decision to override the national council – the MDC supreme decision making body.

“What is surprising is that Tsvangirai is the one who stood up and declared that there was a stalemate. He then suggested that the matter be put to a vote and some of the members of the national council told him that a vote was not the best way to deal with the problem, but he insisted that the matter be put to a vote,” said Themba Nyathi.

“He said the outcome of the vote should be respected and be binding on all of us who were there. He was the first person to be given the paper and he was also the first one to give his paper to the chairperson, but after the counting, he declared that ‘I don’t care whether you call me a dictator; the party will not participate in the election’. He then stood up, took his jacket and disappeared.”

Chimanikire said Tsvangirai would be hauled before the party’s disciplinary committee after the November 26 senate elections.

Chimanikire said: “Some among you have been asking why we haven’t taken disciplinary action on Tsvangirai. But Tsvangirai himself has been saying, nyaya hayiwori (justice will catch up with you). We are still campaigning. We will come back and tell you how dictator riya tariita sei (how the dictator had been dealt with)."
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